She stared off into space, biting her nails.
Sudden pain jerked her from contemplation into reality. She looked down at the welling drop of blood on her fingertip and realized that she had run out of nail to bite.
For a brief instant, she had become the "leader" of the village, directing the gathering of necessary equipment, planning the "attack" on Old Greer House. Then, just as suddenly, she had shrunk back to her proper size as a woman, left behind in the chaos and ordered to her house. She had remained here instead, unable to move.
There was something they didn't understand. This wasn't like barring a witch's house from the outside and burning it down while she screamed to death inside, or sending out a search part for a rouge mountain lion or wolf. The men seemed to think it was something inbetween these two, and had ended up carrying both torches and weapons, the fierce dogs from Hal's farm straining to pull their masters along by the thick iron chains. But Krissa knew better. This was no helpless old woman or desperate cornered predator with animal intelligence. Some of the old stories had vampires as little more than these, crawling about like lizards or running with wolves in the night. But the ones which read more true to her - like the histories written by true scholars - spoke in written whispers, afraid to wake ancient malevolent powers by name alone. They spoke of great and terrible magics, superhuman intelligence and planning, and an insatiable hatred for mortal life which gave them power over death in all her forms. No stake through the heart or garlic could hope to injure them, and even scattering their disintegrated ashes over miles was said to only inconvenience them. Such powers were said to have ruled continents whole in the dark ages of man, only rumored to exist in the histories she read.
The villagers would have no chance against such a power. Rather than saving them all as she had planned, she had instead sent them to their collective deaths. "Leo" would finish them and then come for her, an unstoppable force of nature and unholy wrath.
Something intangible broke inside her and she began moving, trotting and then sprinting. Somehow, she had to save Luke and the others. Rational thought was replaced by a simple panic, a belief that if she were not too late, she could stop it all, reverse time, undo her mistake.
She was choking from dust and from the sprinting-induced pain in her chest, her blouse sticking to her soaking skin, as she topped the small hill and brought the Greer house into view.
She was too late. They had gone inside. Already she could hear shouting and the sounds of broken furniture inside the house. Too late. Too slow. She stumbled at a rush of despair, hopelessness flooding over her. Then she straightened and continued running, deciding that she could at least die with her fiancee and townsmen, rather than facing the monster alone.
Resolve stiffened her spine and steadied her gait. She pounded the dusty road with her heels and pumped her arms clumsily, coughing and wheezing with her exhausted lungs.
The house had grown quiet in front of her. She was almost there, now...was she to be too late even to see them die?
Then she flew in the still-open front door and crashed to a halt, resting against the sofa she had encountered all too abruptly, feeling pain in her lungs to match the new feeling where the corner of the furniture dug into her abdomen.
She looked around in confusion, at the dozen or so faces starting intently at her. Something was wrong here. Weren't they all dead? But there was Leo, standing against the far wall with a defensive stance, hands held before him in a pacifying manner.
She stumbled to Luke's side, clucthing at his arm where he carried a scythe, fresh-sharpened and smelling faintly of oil.
"Wait, Luke...stop...you don't understand, you can't..." she panted. She couldn't seem to finish a sentence. There was something wrong with her head, something wrong...she couldn't breathe...
Luke looked at her and she flinched. There was nothing loving in that gaze. The alien intensity had returned a hundred-fold. He seemed to be studying her, as if she were some bug about to be crushed under his heel.
"Stop what, honey?" he said, no emotion in his question.
"Don't...you can't...hurt him..." she began to cough, and could not stop, wheezing and crying, doubled over.
"Is that so? I knew this was coming. You were spending all that time with him, and now you're his creature. You thought I was stupid, but I knew. I knew all along he wasn't normal."
"No, Luke...You don't...", she coughed.
"Yes, I do," he said softly. His eyes flashed, and he raised the scythe high above him, its razor edge gleaming, flashing like his eyes.
"Stop!" bellowed Leo, but Luke didn't. The scythe flashed again on its way down, and Krissa collapsed, feeling nothing, hearing a great roar in her ears, like a landslide...